Month: August 2016

A mighty battle took place in uptown Marion a few nights ago. A local father and his two young sons stood at the edge of City Square Park, iPhones in hand. For this family, the visit was one of purpose and excitement. After playing the augmented reality game Pokemon Go for a couple of weeks, they had finally reached a high enough level to attempt takeover of a virtual gym and place their mark, however digital and temporary, on the local landscape. Their target was the Marion Heritage Center, controlled at that time by Team Valor, otherwise known as the “red” team. The boys and their father were Team Instinct, or the “yellow” team. I was walking loops around the park, catching wild pokemon and gathering supplies while trying to…

Hoping to bolster dairy farmers once again facing steep price declines, the U.S. Department of Agriculture announced it will spend $20 million to purchase 11 million pounds of cheese. The deal was much smaller than the $50 million requested by the American Farm Bureau Federation, or the $100 to $150 million requested by the National Milk Producers Federation, but that didn’t stop anti-tax groups from speaking out. “It’s yet another example of USDA caving to demands of an agricultural special interest wanting taxpayers to foot the bill for lower-than-desired prices,” Joshua Sewell, senior policy analyst for Taxpayers for Common Sense, said. But the reality is that not all American dairy farmers have done this to themselves, and $20 million isn’t enough to stave off continued culling of family dairy farms.…

DES MOINES — Chances are, if you are asked to describe an average LGBT American, certain attributes will come to mind. The stereotype is that members of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered community are urban dwellers who are well-educated and affluent. There is a reason this stereotype exists. As the civil rights movement has become more prominent, most LGBT community spokespersons have been highly educated men from larger cities. These are the people the public has seen, and who they’ve listened to. But the experiences of this narrow field of activists are only one piece of the story. [caption id="attachment_429" align="alignleft" width="640"] One Iowa volunteers speak with an attendee of the LGBT Rural Summit at Drake University in Des Moines on Thursday, Aug. 18, 2016. One Iowa partnered with…

One of the biggest hurdles facing immigrants and refugees is integration into existing communities. And while there are innovative ideas about how to ease the transition, existing funding streams are rarely flexible enough to put them into practice. Dr. Ann Valentine, executive dean of Kirkwood Community College’s Iowa City campus, says identifying needs isn’t difficult and, since several organizations and institutions are combating similar issues, collaborative programming can be a natural fit. The issue, she told residents gathered in Iowa City on Wednesday for a Johnson County discussion on assistance for refugees, is that funding for educational services exists in traditional, narrow silos. That is a growing problem, especially in Johnson County. For instance, in 2009, Kirkwood’s Iowa City campus had 37 English-as-a-Second-Language credit students. Now there are 270. Although…

Iowa Democrats have their eyes on the Corridor, and are betting on the rise of the “Fab Five.” With a majority of races up and down the ballot mostly set, Democrats gathered in Marion Thursday night to preview the 2016 coordinated campaign with an initiative led by Hillary Clinton’s state team, “Iowa Women Win.” The focus is, of course, on the fact that two women — Hillary Clinton and Patty Judge — earned the Democratic Party’s nomination in races at the top of statewide ballot for the first time in Iowa history. The “amazing women of Iowa’s past, present and future” is a theme the campaign hopes will energize those drawn by the historic nature of Clinton’s candidacy as well as those who have been turned off by Republican nominee…

Visiting Oak Hill Cemetery was necessary this week so that my daughter and I could pay respects to one of the newest inductees into the Iowa Women’s Hall of Fame. Four Iowa women will join the Hall of Fame during a ceremony in Des Moines next weekend. Only one is from the Cedar Rapids area and, unfortunately for us all, she died in 1989. Nonetheless, because of her work on civil rights and passion to make this a more equitable community, Viola Gibson remains a nearly household name. My husband is a local, a graduate of Kennedy High School (Go Cougars!), but I didn’t meet him and move into Iowa in time to know Viola Gibson personally. It wasn’t until 2000 or 2001, when the Cedar Rapids Community School District…

Less than 100 years ago, those who fought for women’s equality were derided as inferior, lazy, oversexed, masculine, childlike and unworthy of consideration. Even now, when a female combat veteran is the first woman to represent Iowa in Congress, and a major political party nominated its first woman for president, it is easy to forget that American women battled for 80 years to earn the right to vote. The 19th Amendment, which took a lifetime to accomplish, is now a lifetime in the past. Yet stereotypes of women as sex objects or puppets to biological and emotional whims persist. It was only four years ago, during the 2012 presidential campaign, that a national news organization announced “something may raise the chances for both presidential candidates that’s totally out of their…

Sales tax holidays like the one happening in Iowa this weekend may sound nice, but they aren’t good public policy. And, yes, I can already hear groaning from the parents and grandparents reading that first sentence. Bear with me. For those who are unfamiliar, for the past 16 years, Iowa residents have been given two days in August to purchase various back-to-school items that cost under $100 without paying sales taxes. In addition, since 2000, the legislature has mandated that all retailers participate. Supporters of these holidays assert the incentive stimulates the economy by encouraging shoppers to purchase more of the goods included on the state’s tax-free list, even if some are impulse buys. But, research has time and again shown this to be false. The New York State Department…

Two Eastern Iowans are delegates to Green Party Convention in Houston this week PHILADELPHIA — Green Party presumptive presidential nominee Dr. Jill Stein is no Ralph Nadar, but Iowans Holly Hart and Wendy Barth also understand this isn’t a typical election year. The two are long-time Green Party members and activists who will travel this week as delegates to the party’s Presidential Nominating Convention in Houston. Barth, of Cedar Rapids, was a Green Party candidate for governor in 2006, after joining the party in 2000. “I became involved as soon as I became aware that Iowa had a Green Party,” she said, noting that she had long been concerned about the environment, which is a key issue for the Greens. [caption id="attachment_458" align="alignleft" width="300"] Green Party members Holly Hart and…